Managing Carrots and Sticks: Changes in State Administrators' Perceptions of Cooperative and Coercive Federalism During the 1990s

The so-called devolution revolution was a significant themein American federalism in the 1990s. Opinions on the issue varywidely. Some suggest that "major changes" occurred in intergovernmentalrelations. Others were pessimistic about the occurrence of anydevolution during the decade. We investigated changes in intergovernmentalrelations between the national and state governments in the1990s on the basis of Elazar's approach to American federalisminvolving: (1) administration, (2) cooperation and coercion,and (3) regulation. We used American State Administrator's Project(ASAP) data collected in 1994 and 1998 to access state administrators'perceptions of national fiscal and regulatory impacts on stateagencies. We conclude that state administrators' perceptionof national fiscal and regulatory impacts changed only moderatelyfrom 1994 to 1998, and that evolution rather than revolutiondescribes better the character of state-national intergovernmentalchanges during the 1990s.     

Who Governs Japan? Politicians and Bureaucrats in the Policy-making Processes

The long-running debate about who governs Japan has been given a new twist by 'rat-choicers' who argue that Japan has been governed for the last thirty years or more neither by bureaucrats nor by a 'conservative coalition' of bureaucrats, politicians and businessmen but by the Liberal Democratic Party alone. This article examines their arguments and sets them in the context of other competing and conflicting explanations. It is argued that more relevant and researchable questions are what is governed and how, an approach calling for a more nuanced analysis of policy making in order to observe the impact on different policies and policy-processes of the role of the state and its institutional structures and their embedded 'collective identities'.     

The life concept in female college students: An exploratory analysis

In the present study a two-part animism questionnaire was devised and administered to 200 female undergraduate students who had fairly extensive course backgrounds in science. When these students were asked to classify each of 15 objects as living or nonliving, 67% (N=134) gave evidence of apparent animistic thought. Yet when the subjects were asked to choose which of several statements reflected their own definition of living, 66% (N=132) claimed that only plants and animals are living. Scientific background did not relate to performance on either section of the questionnaire. Results indicate that although the primary orientation of many young adults toward the word living is not a biological one, most college students areable to classify stimuli according to this criterion.Received her Ph.D. in lifespan developmental psychology from West Virginia University in 1971. Primary research interest is cognitive functioning after childhood.     

Sexual asphyxia in siblings

We present an accidental autoerotic asphyxiation of a 24-year-old man. Further investigation revealed that 18 years earlier, his brother, then 13, had been found dead, hanging in the family bathroom. Although that death had been ruled a suicide, reevaluation of the death scene indicates that this was also an autoerotic asphyxiation. This is the first reported case of sexual asphyxia involving siblings.     

Application of Law to the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.     

Outsourcing – Financial Services Authority report on offshoring

This article evaluates the 2005 Financial Services Authority report into offshore outsourcing with specific reference to experience in India. It concludes that, on the whole, the findings are positive and that UK business methods appear to transfer well.